So a few days ago I “accidentally” stole someone’s bike here in Austin…

The first & last time I blatantly stole something was in 2002 when I was buying a bag of Whopper’s candy at the University of Texas convenience store before a class, and the line was gargantuan.

Running extremely short on time, I sneakily walked out with the 85 cent bag. I felt terrible. After the class finished, I went back to the convenience store, checked out and paid for another bag of Whoppers, then put the bag of candy back in it’s original place in the store.

Net harm to the store = ZERO.

Weight it had on my conscience = IMMENSE.

An $0.85 bag of Whoppers nearly crushed me, so I was horrified I had actually stolen a bike.

…and it was a NICE bike which someone obviously put a lot of work into. It was a “woody” looking bike with a custom paint job, hand-made wood-lined rims, reinforced and upgraded parts, and a gigantic lock chain that just screamed, “THIS BIKE IS REALLY IMPORTANT TO ME…PLEASE DON’T STEAL IT.”

It was Friday evening and me and friends were at a fun tech meetup, seeing old friends and making new ones, then we all left to have a pre-party at my place (which is conveniently located Downtown).

We were all drinking and went out to a big club known for cool people and fun dancing.

Sometime around 2am (when all the bars/clubs here close), I was under the impression the club was giving away a bike. There happened to be a nice bicycle in one of the rooms of the club that looked like it was being “presented”…and someone told me it was a promotional bike they were giving away (I have no idea why I thought or believed this…I’m presuming alcohol played “a small” factor).

On a lark, I decided it’d be funny if I got the “promotional bike” outside the club and started riding around on it….well, I accomplished that goal!

Then I saw my friends walking home and got distracted, so I went with them (still riding the bike). We walked three blocks back to my place where my roommate asked, “Ummm…where’d you get this bike??”

I explained it was a promotional bike giveaway, and I “accidentally” rode it home (I never meant to ride it more than a block away). I somehow didn’t feel that guilty since it was going to be given away anyway.

I put the bike in my closet for the time being (we were about to have a small after party), and finally saw it under proper lighting:

My roommate exclaimed, “This is SOMEONE’S bike….it looks used and even has a lock on it.”

I couldn’t really argue these obvious statements, and quickly realized I was some douchebag who just stole a bike!

…a petty little thief I was.

I woke up extra-early the next morning and searched for the owner through Twitter (maybe someone Tweeted “my bike got stolen from Barbarella” or something along those lines) and through the bike model number etc. I then posted this in the Lost & Found section of Craigslist to find the owner:

No responses, so around 3pm I rode my own bike past the club where my stupidity occurred (for fear of being spotted on the stolen bike), and found some guys inside working on the club.

Me: “Last night I was walking back to my place, and some guy walking by me said, “Here man, have a bike…I jacked it from Barbarella” and then ran off!”

Them: “That’s crazy….must’ve been some crack head or something.”

Me: “It might have been” <– masking the guilt in my voice.

Me: “Well, give me 5 minutes and I’ll ride it over!”

Them: “Oh man, thank you soooo much! That’s a really good thing you did, he’ll be so happy to see it.”

I left sort of laughing how I stole the bike in the first place, yet am the hero for giving it back!

Here’s me right before I rode it back:

I rolled up with the bike, and was welcomed like a savior. They even gave me a personal day-time tour of the club, showed me how they made their new 1920’s-style room, invited me to an event that night (free of charge for their hero of course) and apparently they had a closet full of…soups…(??)…they were trying to get rid of and offered me all of it.

They even started pouring me some scotch to toast the return of the bike (I declined simply because I didn’t want to be drunk at 3pm)!

So I walked out of the club glad THEY DIDN’T BEAT ME UP for stealing a bike….. and with two cans of soup :-)

I’d really like to think I learned something from this incident, but I was actually REWARDED for stealing then returning something.

So the moral of this story is: Steal a bike and get free drinks and soup!

I’ve been no stranger to people not liking me online (normal person + ability to anonymously comment = jackass), but generally in person I ain’t so bad (or so I think…)

I randomly remembered this hilarious exchange I had over Facebook with a newly met acquaintance in 2007 (not sure why I never posted it on my blog back then).

Her scathing words made me laugh so hard I printed it out and posted it on my wall at the time. I also forward to some friends and it “went viral” within our friend circle!

Just so I don’t forget about my #1 fan in the future, I’m memorializing it here:

I won’t use her actual name in the text of this post (being nice so her name doesn’t come up in search results), so we’ll call her ManPoop (that’s what her name sounds like spelled backwards).

After a fun dinner meetup we were all at, some friends told me “ManPoop REALLY hates you…what did you do?” I had no idea, and the only interaction we had was at the same table as 10 other people. I quickly found her boring and hard to talk to, so we hardly even spoke one-on-one. I dismissed any thought of ManPoop until I was later told she so thoroughly hated my guts.

Since this was a family friend of a friend…I decided a quick little message would clear the air (otherwise I wouldn’t have cared at all). I wasn’t prepared for such a well thought out message. This verbal diatribe reminds me of those online commentors that bad-mouth everything someone does…when all they have to do is stop reading.

There was a Zoroastrian Congress in Houston over the holidays where all my friends and family would be. It took place at a hotel, which ensured I’d be eating out all the time and have plenty of chances and excuses to eat like crap.

It’s easy to think, “It’s the holiday, I’ll just indulge a little”….but I KNOW the end result is being sluggish, feeling fatter and finding it hard to wake up etc…

So for the weeks prior to the holiday I began tracking my meals like I did during the 6-pack experiment. I didn’t necessarily give up ANYTHING…I simply ate good, not bad.

I made an old piece of cardboard into a “tracking chart” starting two weeks before Christmas. Everyday I was to write down everything I ate on a little sheet of paper (which I carry in my pocket), then post it on the board at night:

In around two weeks the chart was full:

I actually filled up BOTH sides of the cardboard, for 20 full days of tracking:

It’s amazing how just being conscious of how much you’ve eaten for the day keeps you on track.

Here were some of my eating habits during my hotel stay:

I’d keep fruit in my room, or eat it wherever I could (I stole a bunch from the gym at the hotel).

I’d get the vegetarian meals at hotel-catered events because they would generally have more veggies..not just a big piece of meat and little else.

Tea or water instead of sodas.

I still drank alcohol, but would account for it and compensate by eating fewer calories earlier.

Worked out on a normal schedule.

I wouldn’t “skip” dessert…but rather I’d “pass up foods that don’t add nutrition”.

Since I was eating so well, the tightly packed schedule during the holidays was much easier. I could wake up easier, recover from drinking much quicker, and just in general feel good instead of weighed down….all by simply writing down what I ate!

Last night…
Dec 24th around 7:30 pm:
I was having a pre-christmas dinner with my family. Out of the corner of my eye I spy (that rhymes) an EXTREMELY bright flash along with the loudest thunder I’ve ever heard in my life. It rattled the house and kept rumbling for a long time.

Immediately I knew that lightning had struck somewhere right next to us. It seemed like our backyard. We didn’t think too much of it.

Fast forward to roughly 12:45am at night (Early Christmas morning on the 25th):
We look out the window to see an “orange glow” behind one of our palm trees in the backyard. A little curiosity sent us to the backyard to see that a house right across the street (from our backyard) was fully on FIRE!

I climbed on my fence to get a better view, and I could see some emergency crew just arrived. I saw an emergency crew guy going to knock on the door of the neighbors house to warn them, but then he started running full speed, and in one completely awesome move he did a flying jump kick which violently burst open the door and ran inside screaming for everyone to evacuate! It was pretty damn awesome.

At this point the flames were sometimes blowing 4 to 5 stories high in the strong winds. Fortunately it had rained earlier so no other houses were seriously damaged.

Here’s shortly after they had most of it extinguished:

That giant cherry-picker thing was cool to watch:

Funny enough, the fire was started at 7:30pm by lightning, but ended up finally catching momentum after midnight. Apparently:

7:30om The lightning struck the house and started a fire in the attic.

The owner put out the small fire and thought everything was cool (pun intended).

Small embers kept burning, and started gaining strength.

By 12:45am (Christmas morning) the house was fully engulfed in flames.

By the time the fire was put out, the house was completely gone. Yes, the brick face of the wall looks nearly unscathed in the pictures, but a side-view of the house shows it’s pretty much 100% hollowed out.

There’s some sort of moral to this story, but I’m not clever enough to figure it out.

While pretending to buy something at Brookstone from the mall (I really just wanted to sit in those sweet massage chairs)!

….I saw they carried this little thing called the Boogie Board. It’s essentially an LCD writing tablet. But it’s not a computer screen…in fact it uses zero power except when erasing the slate.

It does nothing but let you write on it, then erase. I played with it from one second and immediately knew I would be buying it!

I always carry around one these standard journals for keeping my notes:

…but this little board allows me to graph out temporary thoughts, doodle, or just things I don’t need to keep written down. When I DO happen to write something on it that matters, I snap a picture of it with my phone. It’s crude, but it works.

No color options, no spot eraser, and you can even use your fingernail to write (or any make-shift stylus like a pen cap).

I often jot on it in the mornings. Even though I always plan my to-do lists the night before, I tend to jot down a few random thoughts on this when I wake up…just to get the day started.

…but mostly I use it to doodle! I learned how to draw these weird house-looking-things from Commander Mark when I was in elementary school:

The erasing feature is really neat….and I can see this concept being developed into many other neato products. All you do is push a button, and the LCD screen “wipes” like this:

I bought the Brookstone Boogie Board a little before the Christmas rush for $19.99…but now everywhere I look they’re $39.99. Guess they got popular QUICK!

*NOTE: Like my What Would Happen If I Die post, I’d like to say this isn’t some weird online suicide note…it’s just my online will in case something were to happen.
Hey, I was an Eagle Scout: “Always be prepared”!

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11-13-2010.
Saturday.
6:24 PM.

I write this on my laptop, sitting cross legged on the floor, leaning against the foot of my bed.

Just 5 minutes ago a very close friend of mine who’s a doctor called me. She was getting ready for a party and got a call that an unidentified 27 year old male was in some sort of “bike” accident, and had arrived at the hospital with bad brain damage. Most likely it’s irreversible and he will likely die in the next few hours. She had to cancel the plans and come into the hospital.

I could hear the relief in her voice as I picked up my phone. She knows I’m not in the same city, and even if I was, I wouldn’t have my scooter there….but it reminded her of me. A 27 year old male who owns a scooter.

Her call reminded me how quick I can go from happy-go-lucky Neville….to a dead lump of cells splattered on the pavement.

I then thought about how freakin cool it’d be if I was dead, but had a post explaining to EVERYONE IN THE WORLD what to do in that situation! Like I was still blogging from the afterlife!

Oddly enough I don’t care about dying. If I’m dead…that’s it. I don’t have to worry about it anymore.

What worries me is the impact my burden would have on my family and friends if I’m still alive…but severely damaged.

Not quite dead….but sort of.

So I’d like to make a public, online living will. In the event of my death or serious injury, anyone in the world can look at what I’d have wanted for myself in different events.

Hopefully this never has to be done…but hey, shit happens.

In the case of my death:

I would want all of my liquid assets to be transfered to my family. This would be wired over to my parents (whom of course would use it to pay off associated costs, or share it with my brother).

Donate every organ and usable part of my body. Rip it all out and give it to people who need them.

If I have some sort of funeral, I’d like this statement to be read:

“Hello everyone, thank you for being here today….I am talking to you from beyond the grave, spooOooOOOoOOoky huh (in a ghost voice)! I’d like to say something as my last words: I was lucky. I was REALLY lucky. I was born in one of the best countries in the world, at a time and place where rapid technological change and innovation was taking place, into an uncommonly happy marriage between my parents, with a great brother, into a small but tight and highly successful Zoroastrian community, and had a fantastic upbringing.I’ve been lucky to have influences on my life that allowed me to never have a job, wake up whenever I want, live wherever I want, do whatever I want….anytime I wanted. I was able to “stay young” through this and have an incredibly fun time on Earth. That being said, that is now all gone. It is gone, but was thoroughly enjoyed wilst it was had.I was here…and now I am not.

This is neither joyous or sad. It just is.

I would like to say I’ll “always be looking over you guys”…but I won’t. I will simply be gone. The sack of cells previously known as Neville Medhora which evolved from billions of years of small genetic modifications and selections has been irreversibly removed from existence.

I am reminded of a quote I heard Jerry Seinfeld say about why he was shutting down the most popular show on television at it’s peek. He said, “After years of going on stage and entertaining the audience, I’ve developed a sense for when to get off stage. Stay too short, and they’ll want more. Stay on too long, and it can leave a bad taste. Now is the time.”

I may not have “stayed on too long”….but it was a great run while I was here!

And look on the bright side: Now that I’m gone, someone else can finally have the distinction of being the best looking human in the world ;-)

(insert raucous laughter and applause here).

I love you all.

In the case of serious brain damage:

Pull the plug. If that doesn’t work, hold a pillow over my face. If that doesn’t work, inject me with something that’ll kill me. If they don’t allow that kind of thing…ship me somewhere they do, and get it over with.

I’d like to make it absolutely clear I refuse to live as a vegetable. I will actually be ANGRY if someone decides to keep me in this state. If I need other people to take care of me in order to simply exist…it’s my turn to exit the stage.

So there you have it! In case something happens, at least people will sort of know what to do.